Adobe demos content-aware move and extend tools in Photoshop CS6

Adobe has posted their fourth sneak peek video designed to showcase some of the new features that will be part of Photoshop Creative Suite 6 set to launch later this year. The most recent clip highlights the new content-aware move and extend tools.

Photoshop senior product manager Bryan O’Neil starts by explaining how content-aware fill currently works in CS5. The program’s algorithm can sometimes copy in the wrong data, resulting in an unusable result. In CS6, users can now use the patch tool to select where they want content-aware fill to paste from.

The next example demonstrates the content-aware move tool. Using this new feature, the user can select an object and move it to a different location in the photo. The algorithm will move the subject and furthermore do its best job to fill in the empty pixels to create a believable background based on the surrounding areas.

O’Neil wrapped up the sneak peek by showing off a different mode of content-aware called extend. By making a rough selection and changing the mode, he is able to extend the length of a roof by simply grabbing and stretching the selection.

While the features shown in the video are extremely impressive, it’s important to remember that the end results can already be achieved with existing software. CS6 and its new features are only helping to automate the process, resulting in time saved and making the modifications available to a much larger audience.